Salvation
by salvationslave
Summary: Her life was a wreck. Her mutation was out of her control. Sometimes she wished she could die. Until she met him. He taught her everything. He was her salvation. PyroxOC. Language and angst.
1. Chapter 1

**Salvation**

She's nervous. Anxious. Irritated. In pain. She doesn't like dealing with people, and there's a million of them here. All whispering. All staring.

She shouldn't have listened to the Professor. Feeling a severe glitch run through her hands as she walks past an electrical socket, she bites her lip and tries very hard to concentrate on something else. But this place is wired. Her body is on the brink of no control. She bites her lip until it bleeds and keeps her eyes locked straight ahead. She's already blown up a car, two houses, half a school, and a third of a hospital. She doesn't need to add a mansion/school/whatever-this-is to her list as well.

It's too crowded. Too wired. She's going crazy and all she's trying to do is get to the first class she has this morning. She hates this place already and she hasn't even made it through chemistry class. She has to get out of here. Juneau might not want her anymore, but she's sure she could manage to lay low in Anchorage. She's beyond tempted to book it this very minute.

_"Please stay just for one day, Charlotte."_

She hates that he can read her thoughts, and furthermore she hates that he can find her even in this fucking sea of people. Running a still-healing hand through her unruly mane of hair, she tries to breathe as she steps into her first _real _academic class since sophomore year, her eyes closed. When she opens them, she wishes she hadn't.

Because the only seat available is one next to a guy playing with a lighter. And of course it's right next to an electrical socket. Of course it is. It's just her luck.

She hates everything.

_"Just one day."_

She's not stupid. The Professor is lying. She's a seventeen-year-old, level four mutant with an extremely low amount of control over her mutation. She might as well be Iran armed with nukes. The only option for escape from this place, if there even is one, would basically be blowing it to bits. And as stated before, she doesn't really enjoy doing that.

Covering her hands with her sleeves, she slides her slender frame into the seat. While she opens her notebook, she tries to ignore the fact that the boy next to her is juggling fire in his left hand while he stares at her. Blatantly. Head turned towards her, eyes fiery and intense, hair a slick mess. He's wearing a black t-shirt , jeans, and boots. The boy behind him coughs loudly and he whips around to glare at him. They exchange a few heated words but she's too pre-occupied with the throbbing jolts of pain that go through her arms and hands every time she moves too much.

"What the fuck?"

Someone else's cry of alarm pulls her out of concentrating on her pain. When she opens her eyes, she realizes that she wasn't paying attention to the pull from the socket. Her whole hand is sparking. Her notebook is on fire. In a mess of confusion the whole classroom goes into a panic.

"Get some water for the notebook!" someone screeches. At the mentioning of water she panics.

"No! Don't! Don't!" she tries to tell them not to bring it over, but no one is listening. Kids are running in every direction to try and get water to pour out the fire even though electricity is whizzing through every cell in her body. Her arms and hands are on fire. If she wasn't so panicked or focused on the insane amount of pain, she might find it amusing that high school students taking advanced chemistry don't understand that water will only make her electrical situation worse. But no one is listening to her. Everyone is trying to get their hands on water. The boy next to her is still bickering with the boy behind them. She's starting to cry.

"Don't! Don't bring water near me you fucking idiots! Just get the Professor!"

She's crying hysterically as her hair is going on end. This is it. Her first day here and she's already managed to fuck up so bad that she might as well die. She's doesn't get it. The Professor can read her thoughts in the damn hallway when she manages but when she's almost blowing out the power to the school and setting the chemistry lab on fire, he's nowhere to be fucking seen.

The boy next to her only turns around to see what's going on once the lights start to spark and sputter and her hair is practically out on end, all fifteen inches of it. She sobs as the jolts travel up her arms to her shoulders, her heart going insane. Everyone is screaming and the lights are sparking and buzzing and her notebook is on fucking fire and she looks like a freak and she's crying-

And suddenly everything stops.

Her notebook goes out in a second, as if it was never alight, the fire stolen away from it from the boy next to her. He twirls it in his hands before it disappears. He's staring at her again. Hair askew, jolts visibly passing through her hands and arms, tears streaming down her face. He reaches past her, wincing when he gets a shock to his arm, and pushes the emergency off button. The power goes off, and for a second or two after she sputters and sparks. She faces him and wills her body to let go, and finally the last volt jolts off into the air.

The Professor and three people she's never seen practically break down the door three seconds after the boy next to her saves her life. Rushing to her, a lady with red hair checks her hands while a very muscular and gruff looking man picks her up like she weighs nothing.

"Get her to the infirmary." The Professor is strict with his order and before she can even really understand what's going on, she's whisked away from the boy who saved her life. She looks up at the man carrying her.

"Who was I sitting next to?" Her voice is crackly and horrid. She might as well die. But he answers her in a hurry, bolting down the hall.

"John."


	2. Chapter 2

**Salvation**

She's nervous. Anxious. Irritated. In pain. She doesn't like dealing with people, and there's a million of them here. All whispering. All staring.

After her little... incident in the chemistry lab, she's not exactly known as the most stable mutant around. To give him credit, the Professor has been trying since her infirmary visit. To be nice. To be a little less persistent on her staying here. But just because he's lightened up does not mean anyone else has.

Mostly, people avoid her. She's not sure whether it's because she has a knack of zapping people with static electricity on accident all the time or if they think she'll start shooting electric bolts from her arms again. Those are the nice people. There are others.

"_Freak!_"

One example in particular is a boy in her chemistry class named Ryan. He sits a few seats away from John. For someone who has to sit next to the newest freak at mutant high, John is pretty relaxed. She's sure she's shocked him a million times in the past two or three weeks, but he never says a word, never flinches, never glares. He sits there and plays with his lighter, and when he's not doing that, he zones out. Sometimes he looks at her. Every time he does, the boy behind them coughs and they exchange heated words. It seems to be their thing.

Coming back into the current world, she notes that the flames in his hands flare when Ryan looks over at her. Biting her lip, she covers her face with a curtain of hair from his glare. Despite the flare, John's face stays calm. She stretches slightly, wincing at the pain that shoots along her shoulders, before she attempts to focus on class. But she can't. John's tricks always distract her. It's a miracle she has a B in this class.

She should be learning about hydrogen bonding, but then the flames turn blue, a new trick of his, and she's hooked. It's almost concerning that the teacher has failed to catch on to John's little trick of hiding his hand in the opening of the desk. He's been doing it for weeks. Scorch marks probably litter the underside.

She envies him, she knows she does. How does he have such control over something as dangerous and unpredictable as fire? Why is his mutation so similar to hers and yet so much easier to keep in check? She's seen him pass the fireplace in the living hall. Not one spark flutters to him. She sits next to an electrical socket and almost blows up her arms again.

She's so concentrated on wondering why his mutation is so simple that, for the first second that it happens, she isn't even paying attention to his flames anymore. But then John coughs gently, and her eyes focus back on his hand. Her cheeks flush into a deep set pink as his eyes observe her reaction carefully.

His hand is cradling a rose made of electric blue flame.

It's the first time she's smiled in a long time.


End file.
